Victims of the Christian Faith?

While some love to attack Christians, many secular movements such as Nazism and socialism have killed far more people. Don't believe me?

Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks;
or the 6 million Ukrainians slaughtered by Stalin;
or the tens of millions of other Soviet citizens killed by Stalin's Soviet Union;
or the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers throughout Europe;
or the 60 million Chinese butchered by Mao;
or the 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot;
or the millions killed and enslaved in Sudan;
or the Tutsis murdered in Rwanda's genocide;
or the millions starved to death and enslaved in North Korea;
or the million Tibetans killed by the Chinese;
or the million-plus Afghans put to death by Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

The record by far is not held by Christians. Even over time Islam has killed many more, as many as 200 million Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Hindus. The American Indians for the most part were never killed by whites (most died of smallpox) and even then not at the behest of Christianity. When Spain crushed the Aztecs, it was allied with other Indians that were fed up with Aztec attacks to gain prisoners for their human sacrifice rituals. (They tore their victims heart out.) Most of the times when whites attacked Indians, it was with the help of other Indians. Indians killed each other in big batches.

World's Greatest Mass Murder

"The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in
history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that
civilization is a precious thing, whose delicate complex of order and
liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians
invading from without or multiplying from within."

- W. Durant, "Story of Civilization"

In other parts of Asia and Europe, the conquered nations quickly opted for conversion to Islam rather than death.
But in India, because of the staunch resistance of the 4000 year old Hindu faith, the Muslim conquests were for
the Hindus a pure struggle between life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and their populations massacred.
Each successive campaign brought hundreds of thousands of victims and similar numbers were deported as slaves.
Every new invader made often literally his hill of Hindu skulls.

Thus the conquest of Afghanistan in the year
1000, was followed by the annihilation of the entire Hindu population there; indeed, the region is still called
Hindu Kush, 'Hindu slaughter'. The Bahmani sultans in central India, made it a rule to kill 100.000 Hindus a
year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100.000 Hindus IN A SINGLE DAY, and many more on other occasions. Koenraad Elst
quotes Professor K.S. Lal's "Growth of Muslim population in India", who writes that according to his
calculations, the Hindu population decreased by 8O MILLION between the year 1000 and 1525.

...We will never be able to assess the immense physical harm done to India by the Muslim invasions. Even more
difficult is to estimate the moral and the spiritual damage done to Hindu India.

- from Negationism and the Muslim Conquests by Francois Gautier

If we throw in the extermination of the Zoroastrians in Persia, Jews, Christians and Buddhists, the toll could easily top 200 million! Is this what is in store when Muslims gain power? How many Jews and Christians (the indigenous people) are left in the Middle East in Muslim countries today? There is your answer.

There is no excuse for any of this, but to single out just Christians is absurd. After all, it was Roman pagans that killed uncounted numbers in the arena.

How many people have been killed by Christians since Biblical times?

VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

"WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD'S DIVINE GLORY"

Listed are only events that solely occurred on command or participation of
church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List
incomplete)

Ancient Pagans

As soon as Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire by imperial edict
(315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan
priests were killed.

Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.

Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the
Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.

Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were
famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468]

Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]

Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because
they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]According to
Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..."

In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.

In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on
demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]

The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to
pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian
minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.[DO19-25]

Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes:
between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near
Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]

Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]

15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights
of the Order. Number of victims unknown. [DO30]

16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized"
Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without
any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women,
children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a
certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that
"the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in
the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the
ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed
caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde
fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".Tens
of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]

Until January 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered
(number of slain unknown) [WW30]

After 6/3/98 Antiochia (then Turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000
slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women and children) killed.
[WW32-35]Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the
enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies,"
according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]

Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the
subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by
the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]

Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (Jewish, Muslim,
men, women, children). [WW37-40]In the words of one witness: "there [in
front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading
ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for
joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our
debt of gratitude."

The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look
upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of
human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It
was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in
all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more
dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from
head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is
reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels
perished." [TG79]

Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following
summer in all of Palestine the air was polluted by the stench of
decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]

Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims
unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]

Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20
million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224]

Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian)
chroniclers.

Heretics and Atheists

Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and
six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]

Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth
control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated
in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E.
Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]

Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.
[DO29]The Albigensians (Cathars) viewed themselves as good Christians, but
would not accept Roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth
control. [NC]Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (the
greatest single mass murderer prior to the Nazi era) in 1209. Bezi�rs (today
France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered.
Number of victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic
neighbors and friends) estimated between 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]

Subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the
population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]

After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and
destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324.
[WW183]

Estimated one million victims (Cathar heresy alone), [WW183]

Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many
others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live
today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least
hundred thousand victims (inluding the Spanish inquisition but excluding
victims in the New World).

1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius
V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]

17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader.
After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his
head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river
[...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish,
they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of
Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]

17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000
Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded,"
reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of
their lifeless mothers." [SH191]

17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of
population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]

Jews

Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians.
Number of Jews slain unknown.

In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on
command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first
synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on
command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]

694 17. Council of Toledo: Jews were enslaved, their property
confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]

1010 The Bishop of Limoges (France) had the cities' Jews, who would not
convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]

1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned
alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of
ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]

1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]

1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were
slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by
the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all Jews above the age of ten had
been forced to wear.

1492 In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than
150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492.
[MM470-476]

(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century,
right into the kilns of Auschwitz.

Native Peoples

Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader)
the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to
propagate Christianity.

Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in
the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said,
"ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because
it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion." [SH200]While Columbus
described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown]
shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the
natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love
"openly whenever they feel like it." [SH204-205]

On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the
declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the
ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the
Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the
requerimiento continued:

"I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall
powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and
shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do
you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to
receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]

Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts
Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New
England ... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, ... and to
raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ." [SH235]

In average two thirds of the native population were killed by
colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of
"the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the Christians of course,
e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the
natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared
our title to what we possess." [SH109,238]

On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a
rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural
resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204]

As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be
counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was
very great and pestiferous." [SH69]

The Indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned
alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to
take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than
descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians
went, he would rather go to hell." [SH70]

What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:"The
Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They
built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent
strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our
Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn
bodies and they were burned alive." [SH72]Or, on another occasion:"The
Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some
their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for
market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute
beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by
dogs." [SH83]

The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of
Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before
the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives were exterminated,
so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other caribbean islands,
who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native
people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a
century". [SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being,
an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their
homeland, had been exterminated." [SH75]

"And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and
Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of
Tenochtitl�n [Mexico city] was next." [SH75]

Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other Spanish conquistadors
likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ
(De Soto also sacked Florida).

"When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the
Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead."
[SH95]

Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of
Amerikkka.

Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native
help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among
(north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European
standards, and was meat to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the
words of some of the pilgrim fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy...",
so that there usually was "no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they
might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians
usually spared women and children. [SH111]

In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the
(generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown
- "being idell ... did runne away unto the Indyans," - to live among them
(that probably solved a sex problem)."Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted
down and executed: 'Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be
broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe'." [SH105] Of
course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow Englishmen: "This was
the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no
choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia" methods
were different: "when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup
and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in
force, burning the entire community" down. [SH105]

On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the
colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the "Peqout
War." The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from
persecution in their own home country England.

When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett
Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief's
pledge they attacked.Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they
were after, because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes
of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and
burned their villages.The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one
massacre wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall
upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames,
where many of them perished ... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies
and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus
did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies":
men, women, children. [SH113-114]

So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to
give us their land for an inheritance". [SH111].

Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no
need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:"Thou shalt save
alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut
20)

Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the bloody
sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his readers that
"sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their
parents". [SH114]

Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists
even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from
their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own words: "blood Hounds to draw
after them, and Mastives to seaze them." (This was inspired by Spanish methods
of the time)In this way they continued until the extermination of the
Pequots was near. [SH107-119]

The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in servitude.
John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for 'a share' of the
captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good'."
[SH115]

Other tribes were to follow the same path.

Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at last give
us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his
Beauty!""Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick
the Dust!" [TA]

Like today, lying was morally acceptable to Christians then. "Peace
treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians
'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in
Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, &
cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]

In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some "600
Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the
Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a 'barbeque'."
[SH115]

To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki
people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a
century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The
Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were
down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about
30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The
Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely
6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118] These are only a few examples of the
multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the
New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had
occurred. And the carnage was not over then.

All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was
before the frontier age actually had begun.

A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were
destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds by smallpox
and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence,
bad treatment and slavery.

In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even
today.

More Glorious Events in U.S. History

Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious
leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the
colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs
of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'." [SH241]

Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a
former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to be
wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and
children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500
killed.From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty
squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about
six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few
steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were
afterwards killed ..." [SH131]

By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage
that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or
more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the
Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat
equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'."
[SH244]

20th Century Church Atrocities

Catholic extermination campsSurprisingly few know that Nazi
extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe
at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous
extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante
Paveli�, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There
were even concentration camps exclusively for children!In these camps -
the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar -
orthodoxChristian Serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered.
Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the
Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the
victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being
estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the
killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce
bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdienst der SS", watching, to complain about
them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did
nothing to prevent them. [MV]

Catholic terror in VietnamIn 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters
- the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial
government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds
amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious
freedom to all (most non-Buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge
anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the
help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's
spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam
"Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections
which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as
well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South
Vietnam. [MW16ff]Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general
assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages
were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for
free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman
Catholicism.The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its
American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which
read:

"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common
security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration
camp."

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks
were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of Buddhist
teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and
burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison
Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which
in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as
well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during
this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly
in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained
or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps.
[MW76-89].To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands
of American GI's lost their life.

Christianity kills the catOn July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a
23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved
herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and
apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of
the Catholic bishop of W�rzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the
wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg
hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them
fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for
medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel's
grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly
faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century W�rzburg was notorious for it's
extensive witch burnings).This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such
evil superstition and ha become known only because of its lethal outcome.
[SP80]

Rwanda MassacresIn 1994 in the small African country of Rwanda
in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered,
apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.For quite some
time I heard only rumors about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994
Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church
journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the
church.Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station
not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:

"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having
actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain
Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital
Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and
allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have
accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has
been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two
years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold
of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the
clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in
Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally
butchered facing the crucifix.According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave
away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu
militia.In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine
nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the
meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the
Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter
in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and
were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The
other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of
the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the
slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is
even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on
fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]

More recently the BBC aired:

Priests get death sentence for Rwandan genocideBBC NEWS April 19,
1998

A court in Rwanda has sentenced two Roman Catholic priests to death for
their role in the genocide of 1994, in which up to a million Tutsis and
moderate Hutus were killed. Pope John Paul said the priests must be made to
account for their actions. Different sections of the Rwandan church have
been widely accused of playing an active role in the genocide of
1994...

As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages never come
to an end.

If today Christians talk to me about morality, this is why they make me sick.

[NC]
J.T.Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic
Theologians and Canonists, Cambridge/Mass., 1992.

[S2]
Newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany, 10/10/96, 12:00.

[SH]
D.Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford University Press 1992.

[SP]
German news magazine Der Spiegel, no.49, 12/2/1996.

[TA]
A True Account of the Most Considerable Occurrences that have Hapned in
the Warre Between the English and the Indians in New England, London 1676.

[TG]
F.Turner, Beyond Geography, New York 1980.

[WW]
H.Wollschl�ger: Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Z�rich
1973.(This is in german and what is worse, it is out of print. But it is
the best I ever rad about crusades and includes a full list of original
medieval Christian chroniclers' writings).